Italy turns its attention to the web

Gaming, once again, is the proof for the evaluation of other aspects related to its development, highlighting - watching the Italian case - the backwardness of technological facilities that characterizes our country compared to the most 'advanced' ones and which certainly limits a lot the technological evolution especially for online gaming. We only have to think to the high speed internet network, still far to fully cover the entire Peninsula. But providers and concessionaires of public gaming don't be discouraged by this competitive defect compared to other countries, embarking on the adventure of Italian online gaming and of its regulations, taking advantage of the opportunities created by the legislator in 2008 and creating a network that does not will be the most advanced in the world, but that can boast of very respectable figures, even more important ones if you think that they are supported by a safety standard higher than the other foreign markets. At least because of the system of licences that allows players to compare themselves with operators that represent the state even before private companies. Already in 2009 the market reached the 800 million euros, with an increase of 88,6 percent thanks to the explosion of online poker, started in the last quarter of 2008, registering record growth rates, with over 600 thousand 'gaming accounts' opened in one year and also bringing a turnover in the players of the market, with the admittance of new realities characterized by companies that came into the online gaming for the first time though they was present in the 'off-line' gaming, but also by creating real start-up focused on the new digital market.

But the real 'extraordinary exploit' that characterizes this strong dynamism of the field must be ascribed to the increase of gaming offer that allowed the emersion of some raising made on unauthorized sites (the so-called 'dot com') to operate in Italy through a licence granted by AAMS. A passage that has been completed and increased with the next 'phase two' of the online market, characterized by the approval of the Community Act 2008 which introduced cash poker and casino games proposing the allocation of 200 new licenses and changing the regulation of online gaming in Italy, marking the debut of new gaming manners (with some exceptions) in July 2011, exactly one year ago (in the end of June, the list of AAMS about the new online licences had 49 companies). And now we are reaping the harvest.

In the first five months of 2012 the online gaming - largely thanks to the introduction of cash poker and casino games – has had an increase in collection of 24.8 percent compared with the same period of last year, although if the real expense of players grew of only 0.2 percent. This is because the card games organized in a form that is not the tournament and games of chance with fixed amount (poker cash and casino games) have a very high payout (between 97 and 98 percent). So because of it, despite they helped the total collection with 5.613 billion euros, they have returned to players 5,456 billion euros of winnings. For a real expense of players of just 157 million euros. A very important datum if we analyze it from the “political” point of view rather than the economic one; this is a right observation in an historical time like the present one where there are a lot of detractors of public gaming and, in particular, who points his finger against the online gaming, considered more 'dangerous' because it is a most accessible and perhaps less controllable field. The figures show that online gaming has been regulated not only for a lucrative purpose since, otherwise, we have had quite different margins and an higher collection for the revenue and into the chain. On the contrary the legislative ratio was of pursuing the request, allowing to the several Italian players already accustomed to gaming through internet who played on foreign and potentially out of control sites, to play in a protected contest regulated by the State, relying on smaller winnings but on a protection and a guarantee of national institutions. We won also this experiment, if we think that the Italian model of online gaming regulation is now taken as a reference by other European countries and the satisfaction of the public continues to grow.